The Royal Ballet's Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor rehearses Soloist Beatriz Stix-Brunell and First Soloist Ryoichi Hirano in the final pas de deux of his Raven Girl, accompanied by Grant Green on the piano and with assistance from stager and Benesh notator Amanda Eyles. Find out more at www.roh.org.uk/ravengirl
The elegiac Raven Girl (2013) is Royal Ballet Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor’s seventh work for the main stage at Covent Garden, and his most story-led yet. McGregor collaborated with visual artist and award-winning writer Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, to create a fairytale ballet that looked back to classics such as Swan Lake but was told with a distinctly modern sensibility. McGregor explained, ‘I wanted a story that in some way connected with the ballet stories of the past… and that involves something surreal, something that delves into consciousness’. The result is a unique piece of visual theatre. Niffenegger’s accompanying novella with her aquatint illustrations is published by Jonathan Cape.
McGregor approached acclaimed film composer Gabriel Yared (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Lives of Others) to create the original score. Yared produced a score for orchestra and electronics that McGregor describes as ‘very filmic but [which] gets right inside your body and really helps with the emotional territory of the work’. Ravi Deepres (Quartett) created the immersive video designs.